- Speaking of the alleged Pyrocene and the alarmist discovery of smoke from wildfires, an alert reader/viewer comments “I was just driving north on Highway 11 near Kirkland Lake Ontario and saw a historical marker for the “Great Fire of 1916”…. I suspect it adds another data point to this story.” Indeed. It turns out that the “Great” (or arguably “Lousy”) fire in question aka “the Matheson Fire” is estimated to be the deadliest in Canadian history though it’s uncertain how many people were killed or how many hundreds of thousands of acres it burned (a useful warning when people talk or write as if we had exact and detailed information about past fires to justify calling a recent one “unprecedented”). Moreover, Wikipedia says, “Because of forest fire smoke that had covered the region for several weeks and the absence of a forest fire monitoring service, there was almost no warning that the conflagration was upon the communities.” Forest fire smoke lasting weeks? Say it ain’t so.
- A number of US state attorneys-general have sent a pointed letter to the “Big 4” accounting firms for pushing climate-related financial disclosure on their clients, warning that this practice may not only increase costs but that the firms “appear to have violated their professional duty of independence by committing to push for climate-related disclosures in financial reporting, contrary to professional standards of materiality, neutrality, and error avoidance.” And indeed to have “created potential conflicts of interest” because they sell such services. Why is there so little of this kind of push-back elsewhere? Why are no Canadian provinces taking this kind of action? And why, indeed, are the firms so eager to jump on this bandwagon? Oh right. They sell such services.
- National Geographic asks “Are U.S. cities seeing more ultra-hot days than they did decades ago?” The real answer is no and was published in the scientific literature earlier this year. Undeterred by such facts, National Geographic commissioned a new analysis which conveniently told them what they wanted to hear: “According to numbers calculated exclusively for National Geographic by the research group Climate Central, more than 30 cities – from Miami to Houston – now experience a month or more of additional days over 90°F than they did in 1970, before climate change caused significant warming. Some 30 others are reeling under 20 or more additional 90-degree days. The increase in these extremely hot days poses problems for health, infrastructure, crops, and wildlife, among other concerns, climate scientists say.” As they would. And we like “ultra-hot”. More than we like “climate change caused” when it’s a description of alterations in the weather not a source of it. Or that old media standby “reeling” whereas if you went there they’d be standing stolidly in place.
- Speaking of which, Anthony Watts channels Paul Homewood with “Hottest July Evah!” under which heading Homewood shows a map of surface air temperature in July 2026 compared to the average for July over the last 10 years. And guess what? There are hotspots including parts of Western Europe, hence the headlines about endless heatwaves the new normal yada yada, and also the Arctic hence it’s warming faster than the rest blah blah blah. And a stretch of the Pacific off Ecuador. But oddly most of the planet shades blue for below average and even “areas surrounding Britain and France were well below normal.” As Homewood adds, “Does not look like global warming to me!” But then, he’s not wearing red-tinted glasses.
- Cor, that’s a classic. Michael Shellenberger notes sardonically that Ghent University rector Petra De Sutter last September told incoming students “In times of increasing polarization, the university has a duty to foster adversarial debate. At a time when an individual’s feelings about climate change or vaccination seem to carry as much weight as years of research, it is all the more urgent that young people learn how to ask critical questions. Doubt means that we dare to question convictions…” and then quoted Einstein that “Dogma is the enemy of progress.” Before cancelling a guy who helped out a DEI candidate for fitting the dogma but faking the work. But we digress. The point is, in mentioning “an individual’s feelings about climate change or vaccination” the rector was clearly seeking to bolster dogma over adversarial debate and didn’t even notice. We pity the fool student who asks critical questions about climate orthodoxy (or pronouns) anywhere near that person or that institution.
- As climate change corrupts field after field and institution after institution, the once thoughtful, even contrarian TED now peddles TED-ed orthodoxy, including how it’s already too hot for a dog’s paws and might well be in 30 years. MSN repeddled it as “The pavement gives third-degree burns – by 2050, extreme heat could last 180 days”. Yeah. Unless it doesn’t.
- On the subject of science more generally, we can’t resist quoting New Scientist that “The first signs of dark matter particles may finally have been spotted”. As you know, to salvage their in may ways highly successful basic paradigm about how matter works, physicists have long been driven to claim that 85% of it doesn’t work that way. Instead it lurks inert and invisible. So why believe in it? Because otherwise they’d have to change their ideas and people dislike doing so. But at some point they have either to find the missing stuff or get a new theory. Applies to climate too.
See Comments 
Tidbits
09 Sep 2026 | News Roundup
In other news, from Daily Sceptic, top paid at USA Environmental Charities:
1. Carter Roberts, President and CEO, World Wildlife Fund
Roberts, who has led the massive international conservation group since 2005, remains one of the environmental world’s top-paid leaders. His base pay in 2022 was $904,841, according to the World Wildlife Fund’s tax records. Roberts’s total reported compensation that year was $1,204,775.
2. Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense Fund
EDF’s leader of nearly four decades took home base pay of $669,771 in 2021, the group’s records show. Krupp’s total compensation that year was $922,022.
3. Jennifer Morris, CEO, the Nature Conservancy
Morris, who started as the conservation group’s CEO in May 2020, earned $732,138 in base pay during her first full year on the job in 2021, the tax filing shows. Her total compensation that year was $758,013.
4. Elizabeth Gray, CEO, National Audubon Society
Gray was promoted in November 2021 to become the group’s permanent CEO. Her base pay that year was $462,069; her total compensation was $705,458. Her pay that year included a contractual retention and sign-on bonus, the tax filing says. She also received a discretionary bonus of $46,514 approved by the board of directors.
(Gray’s predecessor, David Yarnold, left in May 2021. His total compensation that year was $1,276,173, including severance and other benefits.)
5. Mitchell Bernard, Interim President, Natural Resources Defense Council
NRDC’s then-executive director Bernard stepped in to lead the group in early 2021 when Gina McCarthy left her post as president and CEO to join the Biden White House. Bernard held the role through August of that year and is now NRDC’s Chief Counsel. His base pay in 2021 was $479,498, the records show. His total compensation that year was $705,195
6. Janis Searles Jones, CEO, Ocean Conservancy
Jones has led the ocean conservation group since 2017. Her base compensation in 2022 was $440,860, the latest filing shows. Her total compensation that year was $692,836.
7. Jamie Rappaport Clark, President and CEO, Defenders of Wildlife
Clark, who has led her conservation group since 2011, said she plans to step down this year. In 2022, Clark’s base pay was $531,907, according to the group’s most recent tax filing. Her total compensation was $616,137.
8. Andrew Sharpless, CEO, Oceana
Sharpless, who retired in 2024, received base pay in 2022 of $499,936; his total compensation that year was $546,078.
9. Adam Putnam, CEO, Ducks Unlimited
The former Florida Republican congressman has led the conservation group since 2019. His base pay was $339,805 in 2021, and his total compensation that year was $538,303.
10. Abbie Dillen, President, Earthjustice
Dillen took over as the green group’s leader in 2018. She earned base pay of $473,920 in 2021, and a total compensation package of $536,931.
The above salaries are from 2021 and 2022. Doubtless they’ve all increased substantially since then, as so often happens in organisations which seem to enjoy lavishly spending other people’s money on themselves.
Lake Ontario, where's that? I can't find it on my map.